While entrepreneurs may enjoy the freedom that comes with owning a business and being their own boss, there’s always a tradeoff. The effort that goes into building a business over two decades is one that Ottawa’s Nancy Graham knows well.

Academics are fascinated by the way you invest. You shouldn’t be flattered by their interest. They engage in sophisticated analysis in an effort to explain why you invest in a way that so irrational. The underlying premise of their studies is that your investing behavior makes no sense.

The rapid rise in price of Bitcoin has generated intense speculation about the future of cryptocurrencies. It’s instructive to take a closer look at some of the commentary about the future price of Bitcoin, because it tells you a lot about speculation, investing and financial journalism.

Over the years, I’ve written extensively on how to invest intelligently and responsibly, based on sound, peer-reviewed evidence. Together with many others, I’ve extolled the virtues of low management fee index funds, global diversification, keeping costs and fees as low as possible and avoiding or deferring taxes.

Do you want to know if your advisor is “great”? One way to tell is to evaluate what’s being said to you. Advisors have conflicts of interest. If your advisor is charging you a fee based on assets under management, advice that reduces those assets will reduce your advisory fee.

You can’t spend meaningful time in Canada without hearing how much Canadians love their banks. There are five large banks in Canada that dominate the banking industry. Their activities pervade all aspects of the financial lives of Canadians, including investing.

Brokers are a friendly lot. They’re also supremely confident of their ability to manage your money. They’re rarely challenged, which is too bad. Many brokers tout their ability to “beat the market”, by market timing, stock picking or selecting the next “hot mutual fund manager.

I won’t keep you in suspense. The two most dangerous words for investors are “legendary investor.” This description is bandied about by the media to describe an assortment of stock market “gurus”, billionaires and wannabes who’ve made a fortune by managing other people’s money.

I have been hard on you in the past. At times, I was insensitive to the fact that you are husbands, wives, Moms and Dads. You have mortgages to pay and children to educate. You’re under pressure to generate revenue for your employer, and they’re not exactly a charitable group.

Until recently, it was frustrating trying to convince you to become an evidence-based investor. Part of the problem was persuading you that brokers and self-appointed stock market gurus are emperors with no clothes. There’s no credible evidence anyone has the expertise to reliably and consistently pick outperforming stocks, tell you when to get in and out of the market or pick the next “hot” mutual fund manager.

It’s all about fees. There are many fees that eat into your retirement nest egg. The most significant ones are the management fees charged by mutual funds (called “expense ratios”), advisory fees and commissions. Here are some hot tips for dealing with these fees.

Pigs feeding at the trough have nothing on 401(k) plan administrators who permit high cost funds to populate 401(k) plans, when comparable lower cost funds, with the same or higher expected returns, are readily available.

The financial media encourages you to buy individual stocks that a self-professed “guru” believes are underpriced. These entreaties appeal to the understandable desire of investors to make “a killing” by uncovering the next Facebook or Microsoft.

If you’re like most investors, your primary goal is to maximize your returns for a given level of risk. A new report from Morningstar is bad news for investors who tried to accomplish this goal in actively managed funds holding over $2 trillion in assets.

If you’re hoping to achievement the happy retirement reflected in this photo, and you’re investing in actively managed mutual funds, I don’t like your chances. Sorry to be so blunt, but buying these funds is dumb— really dumb.

On February 17, 2017, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 20,624. It is up 4.36 percent for so far in 2017. In 2016, when adjusted for dividend reinvestment, the DJIA returned 16.47 percent. Given these extraordinary gains, it’s not surprising that investors are nervous about a bubble that might soon burst.

The financial media is in overdrive with hyped up stories about the impact of the Trump presidency on your portfolio. There’s endless speculation about how the stock market will perform “in the Trump administration.”

A widow asked for my advice. Her husband had died suddenly in his mid-sixties. He had no life insurance. The couple lived “within their means”, but had little in savings. She had one overriding question: Could she stay in the family home?

This is the time of year when you will likely compile a list of goals for 2017. Here’s one I hope you will put at the top of your list: Don’t be a sucker for terrible, conflicted investment advice. Unlike many other New Year’s resolutions, this one is very easy to implement.

We’re all familiar with the graphic warnings required on cigarette packaging and advertisements in the United States. These warnings have had the desired effect, in the U.S. and in other countries that have adopted a similar policy.

Dear Ms. Whitney, I want to congratulate you on your return to the business of managing money. I understand you will be managing an equity portfolio for a Bermuda-based insurer, Arch Capital Group Ltd.

On its web site, Oppenheimer sets forth its purported goal of helping investors. Here’s what it asserts: “We strive to help individuals maximize returns through an investment approach that’s rooted in four key principles.

As I indicated in my blog post last week, most of the investing advice featured in the financial media about how to react to the new administration is wrong-headed. Efforts to select stocks or sectors likely to benefit from new policies are unlikely to be successful.

JPMorgan Chase & Co has agreed to pay a total of $264 million to settle charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Payments will be made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Justice Department and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

If there’s one thing almost all financial experts agree on, it’s that low costs favorably impact returns. In this article, Morningstar concludes: “firms with high fees are unlikely to offer above-average performance. Low-fee funds give investors the best chance of success over the long term.”

I get depressed whenever I read an article about advisors who lose a large amount of money belonging to athletes. This one is typical. An ex-financial adviser apologized for losing $43 million of his clients’ money. All of his clients were NFL players.

If you watch the financial news (which I don’t advise), you know much of it is filled with “analysts”, “technicians”, fund managers, and other self-appointed “gurus” who explain to the rest of us why we should buy a particular stock.

Like many of you, I was sickened (but not surprised) by the latest banking scandal. This one involved Wells Fargo. It was fined a record $185 million by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over illegal practices relating to account openings.

A participant in the 401(k) Plan administered by Edward D. Jones for its employees has filed a lawsuit alleging breach of fiduciary duty and prohibited transactions by the broker-dealer under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974,

The educational community was rocked by the recent filing of class action complaints against Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Yale University, Duke University, Vanderbilt University and Johns Hopkins University.

I don’t have data to support this observation, but I suspect the ratio of bad investment advice to sound advice is around 10:1. I understand the reasons for this disparity. For the financial media, disseminating bad advice pays the bills.

Recently, I went shopping for a new car. I now understand why a survey from Edmunds.com found that a significant percentage of Americans consider the process of new car buying so distasteful they would give up sex, Facebook and their smartphones to avoid it.

I wish we would actually see the headlines and fictional content that follows. It would materially improve the sad lot of many investors. While there’s definitely been progress, the securities industry is great at disseminating misinformation designed to enrich itself at your expense.

Nobel laureate Milton Friedman is generally credited with stating, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Actually, if you know what you are doing, you can get a free lunch in investing. Unfortunately, most investors get stuck with very expensive meals.

I used to represent investors who had been victimized by broker misconduct. During arbitration proceedings, the broker would often justify his conduct (and worth) by discussing how complicated investing is, given the many different investment options.

Oppenheimer & Co., along with many other brokerage firms, has experienced a litany of regulatory issues. You can find a list of sanctions imposed by FINRA on the firm here and a list of SEC actions here.

When news of the Brexit vote broke, the financial media went into an overdrive of speculation bordering on hysteria. There was much talk about potentially devastating scenarios, including “turmoil“ to global markets.

Robo-advisors have had a significant — and generally positive — impact on the financial services industry. The term typically refers to services that use models and algorithms to invest client portfolios, often in exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

According to a recent poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, two-thirds of Americans earning between $50,000 and $100,000 would find it difficult to come up with $1,000 to cover an emergency.

Why settle for ruining the retirement dreams of one individual investor at a time when doing so on a massive scale is far more lucrative? That seems to be the strategy of some retirement plan sponsors, consultants, endowments and their advisors.

It can be frustrating being an advocate for evidence-based investing. The data supporting a simple buy-and-hold strategy (with periodic rebalancing) of a globally diversified portfolio of low-management-fee index funds is overwhelming.

There’s a lot of talk in the media about “low-information” voters. Ted Cruz may be responsible for coining the term. He referred to supporters of Donald Trump as those “who have relatively low information, who are not that engaged and who are angry.”

It’s small consolation that your broker is only harming one client at a time by claiming the ability to “beat the market.” Recommending actively managed funds, private equity, individual stocks and alternative investments is the tried-and-true Wall Street way of transferring wealth from you to them.

The financial media went into overdrive hyping the sharp decline that the market experienced at the beginning of 2016. Much less has been made of the recovery of the S&P 500 Index, which closed on March 2 with an unremarkable 2.81 percent loss for the year.

Almost every day I get an email from a concerned investor. Their litany of worries includes the terrible start to the year, market uncertainty, geopolitical risk and concern over who will be elected as the next president of the United States.

Some of the best and brightest people — often graduates of our finest business schools — work on Wall Street. They are highly skilled at what they do. Here’s a summary of their “genius” from my perspective

The first two weeks of January returns for the S&P 500 index were the worst in history. That statement is true. The index returned -7.93 percent for the period from Jan. 4-15, which was its worst ever start to the year. How many times have you read or heard some variation of this in a headline?

Particularly in times of extreme volatility, pundits come out of the woodwork to “explain” to the rest of us the reasons underlying the rise or fall of the stock market. For example, how many times have you seen articles attributing recent market declines to a drop in oil prices?

A colleague related this sad story about the death of his elderly mother. Nearing the end of her life, she was in a coma in the hospital and it was clear to him she would not survive. He had always promised her she would not have to endure extraordinary measures to prolong her life if there was no realistic chance of recovery.

It’s sad that terrible advice is so freely dispensed in tough times. Investors are at their most vulnerable, reeling from the market selloff. Many in the financial media see this as an opportunity to boost ratings and generate revenue for the big brokerage firms that support them with huge advertising budgets.

I don’t know Warren Buffett. I didn’t interview him for this article. But I’m pretty sure I know what he isn’t doing to cope with the worst first four trading days in history for the S&P 500 index to begin a calendar year.

I remember feeling repulsed when I first read that Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, raised the price of its proprietary drug, Daraprim, by 5,000 percent. This increase caused the price of each pill to go from $13.50 to $750.

I am not endorsing any political views, but I did note an observation made by Bernie Sanders in the recent Democratic presidential primary debate. He stated that Wall Street’s “business model is greed and fraud.” There’s a lot of data supporting that view.

I don’t want to rehash all the reasons for my view that investors should avoid actively managed funds, expensive, complex investment products and “alternative investments” like hedge funds and private equity. If you find these investments suitable, you have every right to buy them.

While it’s a low bar, Bloomberg TV always seemed to me to be the best of the financial media. Its anchors are professional and knowledgeable. Its coverage is broad and responsible. It avoids the hype and sensationalism typical of many of its competitors.

Last week, I wrote about an experience I had with a broker who took offense at the use of the term “broker” in a talk I gave to a group of investors. I found that odd because he is employed by a large brokerage firm. So I asked what he wanted to be called, and he said “wealth advisor.”

Ken Griffin is a hedge fund manager with an enviable net worth of $7 billion. According to published reports, he recently settled a contentious divorce dispute with his wife, Anne Dias Griffin, shortly before it was scheduled to go to trial.

The market has been experiencing gut-wrenching volatility recently. Monday, Aug. 24 was a particularly unsettling day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) lost 1,089 points before rallying to close down 588.

If anyone could demonstrate expertise in “beating the market,” you would think it would be hedge fund managers. They get paid hefty fees (often 2 percent of assets under management plus 20 percent of profits) to generate “alpha.”

Investing is a unique business. After all, you wouldn’t think of buying any commercial item (like a car) without first negotiating for the lowest price. And few people would consider buying a product if they had no information about its price tag.

Last week, I discussed how the financial media misinforms investors, especially during periods of extreme market volatility. The endless parade of pundits seeking to “make sense” of the market serves only to stoke fear and anxiety.

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Portfolio Management and brokerage services are offered by PWL Capital Inc, which is regulated by Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC), and is a member of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (CIPF).

Financial planning and insurance products are offered by PWL Advisors Inc., and is regulated in Ontario by Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO) and in Quebec by the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF). PWL Advisors Inc. is not a member of CIPF.